How long has prostitution been legal in amsterdam

To achieve this, it proposed a licensing regime of all forms of prostitution with uniform regulation across all communities but keeping the option of a local ban open and the registration of prostitutes. Licensing is also to apply to the escort services. The bill also proposed to raise the age for sex work to 21 years. A more liberal regime to allow non-EU residents to work in the sex industry was opposed on the familiar grounds that it would make for more trafficking.

The registration of prostitutes, with penalties for failing to do so—an unprecedented shift in Dutch prostitution policy—and several measures to clarify the difference between self-employment and wage work, were included to enable sex workers to work independently.

Finally, the bill proposed extra measures for exit options for those who want to leave prostitution. Although both cabinets have made revisions of the text following committee debate, the major intentions were more or less unchanged by the time it was debated in plenary by the Second Chamber in spring There was consensus about the purposes of the bill among the parliamentary parties, none of which contested the dominant framing.

The parties differed in their opinions about the act: the religious parties held it to be a failure, while the secular parties still supported the legalization and ascribed its shortcomings to failing law enforcement and loopholes in the original. The major bone of contention during the debates was the registration of the sex workers which aimed at preventing forced prostitution by establishing a contact between local authority and sex worker to check whether she was doing the work out of free will.

All the secular parties objected to registration on the grounds of the right to privacy. Clients have to ask for the registration pass of their sex worker, otherwise they are also liable to prosecution. This leaves open the question how a client is then supposed to check whether the sex worker was registered or not; an issue which has been left to later regulation.

The raising of the age of consent for sex work to 21 years was less controversial, although the left-wing parties and the Social Liberals had doubts about its effectiveness in curbing forced prostitution. A, Gewijzigd voorstel van wet, 29 March The social rights of sex workers were only discussed at the last stage of the debates, during which the cabinet promised to take away the obstacles to their right to work.

It also promised to extend exit programs for prostitutes, a favorite of the religious parties, but also supported by the social democrats. Despite the reservations of the secular parties, only the Green Left party and the Social Liberals voted against the bill, so that it received a generous majority TK, —, 26 March Noteworthy is the shift in position of the Socialist and the Social Democrat party, who had both voted in favor of lifting the ban on brothels in , but now went along with the new framing.

The bill has received its first reading in the First Chamber, where most parties were highly critical, doubting whether the bill will actually achieve its aims and if the proposed registration does not contravene the right to privacy EK —, , D, Nader Voorlopig Verslag , 13 December The minister of justice still has to respond to the critique before it can be taken to the final vote.

Complicating the issue is that the cabinet Rutte has only 37 of the 75 seats in the chamber, making it dependent on the opposition to pass the bill. The First Chamber does not have the right to amend bills and must therefore either pass or fail the bill in its entirety.

It remains to be seen whether the First Chamber, a house of review traditionally strong on constitutional rights and legal technical issues, will find enough justification to fail it. The Netherlands legalized prostitution in as the old articles in the penal code, which forbade brothels and profiting from the gains of prostitution but did not criminalize the prostitute , no longer sufficed to control the globalizing sex industry in the last decades of the twentieth century.

Local authority could not curb the excesses, as the courts struck down any attempt at regulation as contravening the penal code. The national association of the municipalities the VNG demanded the lift of the ban on brothels, so that local authority could regulate the sex industry, a demand picked up by parliament in the early s.

The new feminist movement developed the new framing of prostitution as work and the prostitute as a modern and emancipated sex worker. This proved compatible with the liberal discourse on the issue, favouring individual choice and treating the sex business as a normal business, and with the feminism of the Left. In this way, it became the dominant discourse among the secular parties.

When the Christian Democrats—opposed to legalizing prostitution—were ousted from power in , the secular Purple cabinets — seized the opportunity to legalize prostitution, with a view to regulating in a pragmatic way.

Implementation of the new act was delegated to local authority, responsible for health and safety requirements, and sex workers became eligible for social rights as well as for paying taxes and social insurance. However, consecutive evaluations of the new act in the s showed that the new system did not solve a number of serious problems in the sex industry.

Although there was now a licensed sector where few minors or undocumented workers worked, there was considerable displacement to the footloose escort service branch and evidence that abuse of sex workers and human trafficking was still around. The Sneep case showed that even in the licensed sector forced prostitution occurred and that its victims were mainly Dutch and EU women and not the stereotypical poor girls from Eastern Europe.

Opponents of the legalization at first found willing ears in parliament among the religious parties. Window of opportunity was the coming to power of new cabinet Balkenende IV in , when all three coalition partners ascribed to a new framing of the issue as the trafficking of young women and the need to fight organized crime.

The fear of illegal migration played a role in revising the law but so did the continual publicity about forced prostitution and its victims. The new framing is compatible with the policy discourse of the current right wing government about law-and-order and migration, as signified by its adoption of the bill of the preceding cabinet.

The proposed law, with its intricate system of licensing, registration of prostitutes and criminalization of the client if he uses the services of a non-registered sex worker, has been passed by the Second Chamber in It is uncertain if the First Chamber will accept the bill.

For the rights of sex workers, the legal changes do not augur well. The bill does little to remedy the lack of social rights, and the stigma of sex work remains intact, so that many sex workers prefer to remain anonymous. The proposed registration of prostitutes and the new age barrier to work are new infringements of their civic and social rights.

The right to work is 16 years in the Netherlands, and registration with the local state is an obligation which goes beyond the customary registration of businesses and professionals at the chamber of commerce for tax purposes. The registration is a real danger to their right to privacy, more so, as the Dutch state has a bad record in safeguarding the privacy rights of its citizens Kagie Undocumented workers remain open to blackmail because of their illegal status.

The new legislation will make it harder for them to find work, as the client will run a risk using their services. The cabinet will not extend humanitarian asylum status to trafficked women or grant work permits to non-EU prostitutes. The categories of sex workers created in will therefore stay intact, although the occupants of the categories have different nationalities and ethnicities than in the s, a consequence of the enlargement of the EU.

It has to be concluded that the state, by its slack implementation of the act and lack of attention to social rights in the proposed bill, is responsible for creating the bad working conditions, intimidation and blackmail itself. Altink, S. Een vergeten groep of Thaise vrouwen in erotische salons in Nederland.

Amsterdam: De Rode Draad. Google Scholar. Rechten van prostituees. Evaluatie Opheffing Bordeelverbod. De sociale positie van prostituees. Asante, A. Het onzichtbare zichtbaar gemaakt. Prostitutie in Amsterdam. Amsterdam Nota Partij van de Arbeid. Asscher, L. De Ontsluierde Stad. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker.

Biesma, S. Verboden bordelen. Evaualtie Opheffing bordeelverbod niet-legale prostitutie. Groningen: Intraval. Bovenkerk, F. Loverboys of modern pooierschap. Amsterdam: Augustus. Brants, C. The fine art of regulated tolerance: prostitution in Amsterdam. Journal of Law and Society, 25 , — Article Google Scholar. Daalder, A. Het bordeelverbod opgeheven: prostitutie in Prostitutie in Nederland na opheffing van het bordeelverbod.

Onderzoek en Beleid, nr. De opheffing van het bordeelverbod. Gevolgen voor mensenhandel? Dekker, H. Amsterdam: Regioplan. Goderie, M. Illegaliteit, onvrijwilligheid en minderjarigheid in de prostitutie een jaar na de opheffing van het bordeelverbod. Utrecht: Verwey-Jonker Instituut. Hopkins, R. Ik laat je nooit meer los. Het meisje, de vrouw, de handelaar en de agent. De Geus: Breda. Janssen, M. Reizende Sekswerkers. Latijns-Amerikaanse vrouwen in de Europese prostitutie.

Kagie, R. Hoe Nederland verandert in een controlestaat. But that approach clashes with what many sex workers are increasingly demanding: the ability to book clients online and work from home. For many sex workers who have built a community in the area and for whom tourists are clients, the potential changes are seen as an attempt to make up for the window closures, rather than an adjustment to the modern sex industry in the digital age and an effort to grant them similar rights to those enjoyed by other independent workers.

December, who works for De Stoute Vrouw The Naughty Woman , the only lesbian escort agency in the country, echoes concerns that have long plagued the sex work industry. Sex workers are mostly seen as objects of desire or cause for criminal activity, and the industry is blamed for sexualizing women for profit, but in reality their calls for change are no different from those of non-sex workers.

They just want a right to economic and moral autonomy. At a time when online ads for sex work are increasingly taking precedence over walking the streets or renting a window, and with market changes allowing more sex workers to work from home—or in private, anonymous spaces—policymakers are considering increasing the number of permits beyond the red-light district.

But they have yet to consider enabling sex workers to book customers online—a practice currently prohibited for sex workers by a General Municipal Ordinance.

Legally, policymakers are obligated to cooperate with research carried out by the ombudsman. Yet as Zuurmond considers the possibility of facilitating booking clients online, sex workers have already taken matters into their own hands. Demanding autonomy, control, and opportunities for self-development, independent sex workers such as those at My Red Light , a window brothel in De Wallen run by sex workers, are collectively offering jobs, rooms, and blurred images of sex workers online.

However, city councilors in charge of making policy decisions have yet to follow their lead. Policymakers are exploring changes grounded in safety concerns, a desire to regulate, and attempts to deter tourists, but they fall short when it comes to addressing the nuances of the industry itself, which today includes working in windows, working from home, escorting, webcamming, and porn.

We will have to hide, to work in apartments, where we will be alone and vulnerable. A fund is to be created to offer sex workers protection, tackle trafficking and deliver short-term residence permits to foreign prostitutes who want to leave the business, a government official told ABC News.

The plan is to have it in Parliament by the end of the year. On Saturday afternoon, prostitutes took to the streets to condemn what they saw as a damper on their business, drawing support from celebrities, intellectuals and ordinary citizens. Some in the crowd described the petition as hypocritical. In March, the government announced that night-time tours of the red-light district will be banned starting on Jan.

What else is there to do in the Red Light District? Give us feedback. Read Next View. Hotel The Craftsmen. Crane Hotel Faralda Amsterdam. Mercedesbnb Amsterdam. The Pavilions Amsterdam, The Toren. PH93 Amsterdam Central. De Ware Jacob Boutique Hotel. Hampton by Hilton Amsterdam Centre East.